Arachnophobes can usually take comfort in the fact that spiders are solitary creatures. The vast majority of the almost 40,000 known arachnid species have pretty miserable social skills, so they tend keep mostly to themselves.

Advertisement

But there exists a small handful of around two dozen species — known collectively as "social spiders" — that get on surprisingly, unsettlingly, terrifyingly well in the company of conspecifics.

Anelosimus eximius is one such species. In fact, they're among the chummiest spiders on Earth.

In the clip featured here, David Attenborough describes how tens of thousands of A. eximius will hunt in packs to lay waste to prey hundreds of times their own size. It almost makes you nervous to see Attenborough standing so close to their web. Where's William Shatner when we need him? [spotted on reddit]